Faculty Syllabus

Course Description

Instruction in building solid designs through a known process of research, brainstorming, development, testing and iteration. 

Course Prerequisites

N/A

Course Rationale/Objectives - Review

This course will immerse students in the practice of Ideation in the problem solving process for various digital products and services. Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract. Ideation comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation to development, to actualization. “Ideation and Design for Software” will be a “sub-context” for next-level-courses in the User Experience Design degree.

Required Textbooks and PDF’s

None. All texts will be provided in class

Recommended textbooks for your journey

• The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods by Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, Larry J. Leifer (ISBN 1119629195)
• Sketching User Experiences
• Sketching User Experiences - The Workbook
• Drawing Ideas
• Change by Design
• The Art of Innovation
• The Design of Everyday Things
• Rapid Viz: A New Method for the Rapid Visualization of Ideas, 3rd Edition
• Solving Problems with Design Thinking
• Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon
• The Steal Like an Artist Journal: A Notebook for Creative Kleptomaniacs, by Austin Kleon
• Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking , By Jeff Gothelf
• The Bootcamp Bootleg, an active toolkit to support your design thinking practice - Free resource from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford's d.school.
• An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE - Free resource from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford's d.school.
• Mix Tape Series - 1. Understand, 2. Ideate, and 3. Experiment - Free resources from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford's d.school.

Course Competencies

Competency 1: Introduce and learn the importance of ideation

Competency 2: Develop techniques to empathize with users & define problems

Competency 3 Learn how to ideate and explore divergent ideas 

Competency 4: Master the skill of discriminating between different ideas to converge on a solution

Competency 5: Gain the ability to communicate solutions

Competency 6: Apply ideation methods to workshops

What you’ll learn to do by the end of this course:

• Demonstrate the use of sketching for ideation, visual thinking, creative problem solving, storytelling, and idea generation.
• Sketch wireframes, storyboards, interactions and animations. 
• Explore the application of ideation/sketching in Design Thinking and User-Centered Design. 

What you’ll learn to do by the end of the discipline:

• Produce prototypes for software applications using industry standard methods, tools, and techniques.
• Apply a user centered design process in the creation of software applications.
• Design and develop responsive layouts for multi-device, and multi-channel applications.
• Demonstrate proficiency in team collaboration.
• Demonstrate professionalism and proficiency, in the presentation, design, and delivery of a UX portfolio.